Score:0

External USB HDD no longer appears in File Manager mounted list, how to safely remove

sz flag

When I plugged in my WD My Passport for the first time it appeared in the File Manager list at the left from where I could "Safely Remove" it which caused the HDD to spin down so I could safely remove it.

But then I formatted it from Gparted and now it is no longer automatically mounted and no longer appears in that list from where I can "safely remove" it.

I don't really care about it being automounted because I can mount it myself from the command line, what I care about is how to cause it to spin down ("Safely remove") so I can safely unplug it from USB (because even if I manually mount it from the command line, it doesn't appear in the File Manager list).

Maybe there is some terminal command I can use to cause it to shut off, like: safely_remove /dev/sdc etc. ?

Thanks!

heynnema avatar
ru flag
Please describe how you formatted the drive using `gparted`. Did you lay down a fresh partition table? The drive should appear in Nautilus. Is the drive connected directly to a computer USB port (USB2 or USB3?), or via a hub?
Score:3
ru flag

If the disk has been unmounted, via Nautilus (using the eject icon), open the Disks application, select the disk to power down in the left pane, then click either of the icons marked below, to spin down the drive and power off, and then it can be safely unplugged from USB...

enter image description here

Score:2
in flag

You can do this with hdparm:

  1. Open Terminal (if it’s not already open)
  2. Spin down the device:
    hdparm -y /dev/sdb
    
    Note: Be sure to replace sdb with the actual device you’d like to spin down.

You can use this command whenever you’d like to have the drive power down. If it’s mounted and an application wants to read from it, then the drive will spin up again.

Jack avatar
sz flag
Thanks for the answer and here's an upvote, I selected the other one though because it actually brought back the functionality of powering it down from an Ubuntu interface (even though your answer more closely matched what I asked).
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